…the first poem that I ever wrote was yr eulogy. this poem I’m writing now is an elegy. the difference between the two is feeling. to the deranged soundtrack of five Bee Gees songs on repeat, I tried writing yr life as it drifted further and further away, the world’s last polar bear forlornly waving from a melting ice floe. the thing is, an iconic light can’t be written. and at this point, I could toss all of language into the steaming Birrarung. I don’t care abt elegy as a way to pickle the dead. immortality is for plastic or pantyhose. in The Undying, Anne Boyer’s daughter says to her: you forget that I still have the curse of living in the world that made you sick. no one calls the ocean broken. it’s a constant reminder that many pieces can move together as one, like a swarm of wasps in a trench coat furtively pretending to be a human. at yr funeral, I was a leak disguised as myself. I texted my friends I feel like a walking wound. my hair was greasy. my demeanour was sentimental. my energy was goblin. a pain so intense it was like I snorted it. every word in my eulogy reduced to sediment. yeah, the failure of language blah blah blah but how often do we feel it. I felt it. a family friend who is an ice cream entrepreneur described you in three words: ice cream ice cream ice cream. I think abt yr lactose intolerance. someone kept telling me how great an employee you were. it’s a short commute from the office to yr funeral. someone else told me they’re surprised that my eulogy isn’t entirely terrible. I can’t help but think that I should be allowed to write bad poetry abt you. another family friend mistook me for someone else. every interaction at this funeral is an anthropological case study I’m filing away for future reference. I remember thinking what do I do with my hands? our hands make us different to almost every other living thing on the planet. for example, yr baby bird hands. I didn’t know half the people at yr funeral. every reassuring touch felt like a plume of vape in my face. cc: this Youtube video where doves released at a funeral are crushed instantly by a passing truck. a fly dying in a bowl of Neapolitan ice cream. I’m trying to remember you before it’s too late. the world is always running towards me and memory is always running away. scientists have found that pain can both sharpen or blur memory. well, I think that pain should make up its fkn mind. I watch the film 2046, where 2046 is a place in the future where people go to recover lost memories. the camera feels exhausted. everyone is always leaning against things or into each other or off rooftops against a neon backdrop. life is so tiring, but I guess you wouldn’t know anymore. I’m reading abt a woman who inhabited a part of the world known for its barren nature. she needed to live inside the emptiness for a while. people write abt grief as absence but it’s the fullest thing in the world. it used to be thought that memories break down over time like a packed lunch forgotten in the sun. experiments with sea slugs, mice and fruit flies show that forgetting is a biological process. not decay, but deletion. a light is crushed in my head……………………………………